This was my second try to make extract from 96% alcohol. We used method that one guy shoved on other web. I asked him if he want to share the " making of" video but he refused.

So here im to show you ..... How to make Cannabis Extract aka Phoenix Tears and get most of alcohol back.

How to...

I put 57g of lower buds into 3,5L jar and let them wash in 1L of mentioned alcohol for one week.

like this

Didnt melt that material just mix it two times a day.

Then i filtered that crude material and put (we can call it tincture) in a bottle....that crude material was then washed with another 0,5L of alcohol to get most of essences out just for one day....in this stage i lost something about 100ml of alcohol

You can see that fine deposit ?

That needs to me filtered also for this i used funnel with tissue

Do you see that small green drop ?

falled into small green lake ?

Filtration of those 1,4L of tincture takes about 2 hours...its slower but cleaner.

Sorry that this part isnt better documented as usual batteries were almost dead and i dont want to risk end in middle without pictures.

Cooking boiling most of alcohol out.

So the point is to make tincture boiling because alcohol gets from liquid state into faseous state. And for this we have there cooling device to get it back to liquid state.

And because high % alcohol isnt cheap we want it back as much as we can.

I had borrowed that electric pot for fondue. Not sure about temperatures i used because it has only 8 red diodes.

Warming it up...

Here is cooling device ... my grandfather used on of these when he was making his spirit at home ... its water cooled.

Here we have HIGH-TECH water control system ... lol

We used as a heating medium classic oil...if you like to you can use olive oil but rape oil is cheaper..

after some time alcohol has its boiling temp

Alcohol that gets back isnt pure anymore but lightly green

After some time ... i think its hal of time and only a 3/4 of 1L tincture left to make

my safety supervision fall asleep

and here we have result ... 11ml of lightly liquid extract about 1,3L of alcohol back and some heavy duty sponge-biscuits

The whole "getting back 1,4L alcohol" procedure takes about 6 hours

That makes about a little bit under 20% yield. Not bad from lower buds huh ?

And i didnt measure how much i get back but its about 1,3L. At least i think.

What i wanted to show here is that you can see even noob like me can do it at home.

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Yes its a bit tricky but its closed circle and if you dont fill that cupping-glass to much it wont boil to much into cooler. yea that happened to me.

Also it has to be mentioned

Since the extract is less than ideal in terms of bioavailability in plasma. When oral administration is 1-4%, sublingual administration is 20-30%. This is due to first-pass effect, the passage through the digestive tract and loss (for absorption is also important the acidity of gastric juices). It would be good to use in spray form (simple application), whereas the use of the extract orally in massive loss and I would say useless.

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Back in the 70s my brother and I had an "Isomerizer," which was really an air-cooled soxhlet extractor. It was MADE for this, and used only a light bulb for heat. Back then, they cost about $125, but since a pound of weed cost about $400-$500 back then, that was serious money. It was intended for making "hash oil," or an alcohol extract of whatever material you put into it.

The 'isomerization' part came in when you added hydrochloric acid to the solution, which was supposed to 'isomerize' CBDs and other less desirable cannabinoids, and turn them into delta 9 THC. It seemed to do something, but I can't say what. People typically used them to extract waste products, like lower leaf, so it was often used on inferior weed. I wouldn't mess with that aspect of the device, if I had one today.

If you can find one of these babies today, in someone's basement, attic or garage sale, get it if you can. The crazy, 50s-era UFO looking top is the air cooled version of Phuuu's water cooled condenser. You remove that, and there is a stainless steel interior reservoir that holds the alcohol, with a light bulb underneath it. (The bulb is completely isolated from the alcohol and weed.) A basket hangs above the alcohol, in which you can put a coffee filter full of weed. Turn it on and you have the alcohol vaporizing and rising into the air-cooled condenser. It condenses and then drips down onto the weed, sort of like the way old coffee percolators used to work. To reclaim the alcohol after extracting, you replace the filter with a glass beaker. It comes out clear and colorless.

I was also, very blessed to know, and pal around with a chemist. A wonderful man, not from America, and was just begining to loosen up, and partake here and there. We worked that machine for a couple years, and man, it lived up to every penny I paid for it!! It made decent products from trash starting material...but you had to work for it, with all the washing of solutions from the extracts, making DAMN sure it was super pure and clean. Every time you add acid, you had to nueltrize it, and wash it.

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Yeah, I remember the hassle of making the stuff. I think I'd just use it for straight extracts if I had one now. My favorite thing to do with the stuff was construct bowls like a layer cake with weed, oil, weed, oil...

We got fancy toward the end, messing with activated charcoal filters, but then I moved, and didn't have a place to grow outdoors for a number of years. My brother ended up trading it for weed.

I don't know about Russia, but 96% alcohol (called 'grain alcohol' in the US) is kind of pricey here. Not to get into politics on a no-politics board, but the only tax that can be increased in the US these days are taxes on alcohol and tobacco. Most other taxes are evil and must be eliminated (in the current political climate), but taxes to punish drinkers and smokers are always welcome. People who drink grain alcohol are deemed the most evil of all (beer and wine drinkers are considered the least evil). Reclaiming the alcohol would be great.

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what do you mean when you say"for heating medium i used classic oil" i dont understand this. also, every time i make oil for smoking, after all the alcohol is evaporated the oil is usually very dry and hard amber, when you scrape it from the glass pan it comes up in shards how do you get it to be oily? like the way it is in your pictures and in rick simpsons videos? are you adding the olive oil to the mixture? and if so how much? i am about to make some for a friend with skin cancer, and i don't know how it is soft and oily. it always turns out dry, like hash but a bit stickier. any advice would be appreciated as i'm going to start the soaking process when i get home.

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what do you mean when you say"for heating medium i used classic oil" i dont understand this. also, every time i make oil for smoking, after all the alcohol is evaporated the oil is usually very dry and hard amber, when you scrape it from the glass pan it comes up in shards how do you get it to be oily? like the way it is in your pictures and in rick simpsons videos? are you adding the olive oil to the mixture? and if so how much? i am about to make some for a friend with skin cancer, and i don't know how it is soft and oily. it always turns out dry, like hash but a bit stickier. any advice would be appreciated as i'm going to start the soaking process when i get home.

Chief:

If you add a little alcohol, or stop evaporating before all the alcohol is gone, you can get it to whatever consistency you want. To make it into a salve for skin, you might want to make a tincture out of it, and then mix the tincture with some sort of oil.

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thanks mr. dirt, i kind of figured i had to leave a tiny bit of solvent to make it oily, but wasn't too sure. i made some saterday night and gave it to a friend with a bad spot of skin cancer on his arm. apparently concentrated oregano oil also works, it didnt look anywhere near as bad as it was 2 weeks ago when i saw it, but he ran out of the oregano oil and it is not cheap. so he will finish off with the cannabis oil. man i ate a bit of it that i scooped out of the bowl with my finger, and i have to say i need to make enough to eat it everyday! i loved it, the sativa effects were no where near as intense, but it was waaay more relaxing and i loved it. i just felt great, and super relaxed, and it lasted for hours, about an hour and a half after eating it i fell asleep for about an hour until someone called me and woke me up, i still felt great when i woke up.lol i believe im going to start making canna butter or more of this oil next time i get some trim and leaves.